La Paz

So I 'did' Machu Picchu, but it was raining so unbelievably hard I didn't dare take the camera out and take any pictures and there was too much low cloud to really get a sense of the layout, was still pretty impressive though, more for the location than the actual ruins.  Went for pancakes for breakfast on Christmas day and the hostel did a Christmas lunch, by Christmas I'd spent a week in Cusco and was pretty keen to get out of Peru, so took an overnight bus down to Puno on the edge of Lake Titicaca.  The next day I cycled round to the Bolivian side of the lake at Copacobana, still lots of cloud and placid Aymarans keeping placid cattle, it seems like not much happens up there; I even saw a bike with rod pull brakes, which I'm pretty sure became obsolete about 100 years ago.  Anyway, passed into Bolivia without any problems, spent the night in a pretty dingy hostel in Copacobana, had planned to camp by the beach but it started to rain heavily about an hour before sunset and turned my campsite into a bit of a bog.

The next morning it was still raining on and off, and there was an ominous lack of buses and people hawking bus tickets in Copacobana, it turns out the government had doubled petrol prices overnight and so all the roads into and out of La Paz were supposedly blockaded.  Had a fairly wet day getting to La Paz but said road blocks failed to materialise, instead I bumped into the French couple on a tandem who I first met at Quito airport, pretty long odds especially as we were both lost somewhere in El Alto (the sprawling sister city to La Paz).  Had a day off in La Paz the next day, and wasted most of it in my most cherished pursuit of inner tubes, didn't find any, but did manage to spend about GPB30 on cereal bars and dried fruit stocking up for the next few days as I knew I was heading for the middle of nowhere.  Met up with the French couple again in the evening to swap some stories, given that they're heading for the same place as me we'll probably bump into each other again somewhere in Chile.

The next morning I headed out of La Paz for the Chilean border, I was aiming for a string of Volcanoes and national parks along the Chilean/Bolivian border for a few days offroad cycling and wild camping.

A few photos of Lake Titicaca and one of the view on the way into La Paz.

Cusco redux

Have had more success this time round, seen lots of old stones and churches etc as per pics below, have uploaded some pics for the Paracas/Ayacucho leg too.

Am off to do Machu Picchu for Christmas eve tomorrow, and then off to Lake Titicaca and on to Bolivia, hope you all have a lovely Christmas and don't get too stuck in the snow.

Cusco

Very brief: absolutely hellish bus ride to Cusco , 22 hours on unpaved roads and stomach far from sorted, thought I'd give it one more chance so spent the night at a hostel in Cusco.  Still felt awful the next morning so took myself off to hospital, turns out I have parasites and some kind of bacteria both ravaging my digestive system.  Am now hooked up to lots of drugs, should be better in a couple of days.

Paracas and Ayacucho

Have several mares to report, but will try and start at the beginning.

Left Lima a couple of days ago, took a bus for the first bit to dodge more motorway/general sprawl, apparently Lima has an official population of about 9 million but about the same number living around the edges in pretty grim looking shanty towns.  Anyway by the time I'd waited for the best coffee shop to open to get my last respectable caffeine fix for quite a while, and negociated my way to and then through the bus station I didn't end up getting a bus til noon, which then took an unbelievable 4 hours or so to cover about 150 km during which one was subject to the torment of low budget comedies dubbed into spanish - horrible.  Moreover there was no air-con, or open windows, so I picked up a stinking headache and probably some interesting bugs on the bus.  I cycled the rest of the way into the reserve just in time to be treated to an awesome sunset, though by this point said bugs were beginning to bit and I could feel myself going down with a fever, spent the night in my tent sweating it out, evidently hampered by an increasingly volatile digestive system and so didn't really get any sleep (although it was an excellent camping spot, right on the flatlands in front of the sea, and with a great view at about 6 am).  For my troubles I also got a tent full of mosquitos so got fairly well mauled by them too.

Anyway very very slowly wobbled my way back to Paracas pueblo the next morning, laid siege to the local plumbing for a while, then found I'd missed all the boat trips to the Isla Ballestas (penguins) because it was off season so they were hardly running any.  Wasn't really in the mood to hang around all day to take the following morning's boat so decided the penguins were going to have to wait for Patagonia and headed off for the mountains. Racked up about 90 km and 1500 m of climbing which felt fairly respectable given that I hadn't eaten more than a couple of cereal bars or slept.  Unsurpisingly was fairly utterly shot when I arrived, found a cheap room, and tried hot food, went through my system more or less as Newton would have predicted, probably slowed slightly by the vagaries of the small intestine, thus got a terrible night's sleep again, fever but less mosquitos this time though.

Set off early the next morning, still shattered and with a lot more climbing to go, had racked up about another 1500 m climbing before trying my next hot meal, slightly more success but still a far cry from successful, more climbing fuelled by cereal bars on a deteriorating road surface, bits of the road were just wet, sticky tar which coated my tyres and then picked up gravel and dust rendering my incredibly expensive rubber useless.  The lack of traction coupled with a couple of day's fatigue had a fairly predictable result.  I crashed quite badly and managed to wrench my shoulder part way out of it's socket.  Was kind of in the middle of nowhere at this point so ate some oreos for the shock and cracked on, another 10 km of climbing and I topped out at somewhere over 4000 m.  At that height I was cycling in the cloud and it had got pretty cold.  Some mix of shock, fever and fatigue meant I was completely unable to retain any body heat, so put on everything I was carrying and luckily found a little village a couple of kilometres on.  Went and hid in the 'restaurant' there which was little more than the front room of someone's house.  Drank soup and sat huddled in my sleeping bag (it was barely much warmer inside than out) watching low grade Peruvian soaps.  After a couple of hours of that I had realised that I had actually done a fair bit of damage to my shoulder, and still wasn't that warm, so persuaded some friendly peruvian truckers to give me a lift to Ayacucho, anyway 7 hours spent fetal-like under a blanket in the back of a truck cab later I arrived at Ayachucho, at 2 in the morning, found a cheap hostal and went to sleep.  Unfortunately it was on a pretty busy street so i only got about 4 hours sleep which seems to have been the perfect amount to make me tremendously grumpy this morning, although that only lasted as long as it took me to find Via-Via, which is an excellent cafe/restaurant overlooking the Plaza de Armas here.  They did a great breakfast which after not really having eaten for three days has pretty much sorted me out.

Won't be cycling for a bit though because of the shoulder, am getting a bus to Cusco tonight and will probably spend a week or so there sleeping lots and will see how the shoulder feels/get some long-distance physio.  Definitely don't think my stomach, improving as it is, will handle guinea pig, am really craving a good pizza so am off to see if I can find one.

Now with added sunsets/sunrises.

Lima

So have been in Lima the last couple of days, it's mostly sold itself to me in the form of good coffee places, ice cream, juices and bike shops, especially the latter.

I left Trujillo with a couple of french-canadian guys who'd set off from Montreal at the beginning of September (photo below), although it wasn't quite that simple.  We were going to leave then they had some mechanical problems and as I was still toying with doing a big day I headed off, only to get thoroughly lost in the outskirts of Trujillo, managed to get out in the end and got my head down to climb a long but fairly gentle hill out of the city.  I was then overtaken by a truck with said french-canadian hanging off the back, literally.  They were still on their bikes but with a hand each holding the tailplate and being dragged up the hill.  I though this was pretty mad but gave it a try anyway, so ended up spending the rest of the day cycling with them, was nice to have some company and someone to share the headwind with, so it ended up being a fairly gentle day to Chimbote which, again, I found out afterwards is supposed to be amazingly dangerous, but wasn't.  I did then get a chance to try their fairly unique way of finding accomodation.  Rather than try a hostel or campsite they would turn up at the local police station and essentially beg a bed for the night off the police (or firemen, or whoever else).  After a couple of false starts we found a friendly church and they gave us some kind of meeting room to sleep in for the night, more free accommodation which is always good.

The next morning we ate about 2 kg of oats between us and then headed off south.  About 25 km into the day we split because they were heading up to Huaraz in the mountains and I was continuing down the coast.  Following on the theme I found out when I got to Lima that Huaraz is experiencing pretty serious civil unrest so I don't know how they'll get on with that.  Oddly enough the people who told me that were more french-canadian cyclists who'd been cycling with the other french-canadians in Colombia, I'm pretty sure the cycle touring world is quite small...  Anyway I carried on to Casma for lunch, and after lunch climbed about 10 km out of Casma through more desert before having another inner tube related mare.  Basically had so far been completely unable to find the right size inner tubes in Cuenca, or anywhere else on the way and so had been riding on skinny inner tubes which were massively overstretched inside my fat tyres.  Despite having been holding up pretty well, they both perished in quick successsion leaving me somewhat stranded which was a bit of a problem, since the next town wasn't for about 50 km.  I tried flagging down a bus for a lift but they weren't having any of it, so freewheeled most of the way back to Casma on a more or less flat tyre and wet and bought a bus ticket to Lima.  Obviously that wasn't really ideal, but I'd been planning on getting a bus the last bit into Lima anyway because apparently it's an 8-lane highway, but still feels a bit like cheating.

Thankfully I've now find some inner tubes of the right size so should be mare free for a while at least, tomorrow I'm heading off down the coast to Paracas national reserve, hopefully for some penguins, then turning inland to begin the climb to Cusco.  Have had a little look at the map and there are a good number of passes over 4000 m so I reckon it'll be pretty tough, hoping to make it to Cusco for Christmas though.  Will be passing through Ayacucho which is supposed to be quite a nice traditional andean town and, according to the peruvian guy I went for lunch with today, they only eat guinea pig there, we will see...

p.s. have added photos to most the old posts.

Desierto de Sechura, Chiclayo and Trujillo

Cycling through the Desierto de Sechura is definitely one of the most uniquely, and unpleasantly difficult things I've done.  My makeshift alarm failed to get me up at 5am as desired, so I didn't really hit the road until more like 7.  I made pretty good progress until 11ish when the wind began...  The first 90 km or so were just more arid scrubland, but that gradually gave way to proper desert with sand dunes and everything.  Almost nothing alive out there save for a few lizards and the odd condor scavenging, stopped for lunch about 95 km into the day, and was feeling pretty confident I'd make it through in good time. Between about 11 and 1 the wind went from a light breeze to a solid force 6-7, about 50 kph of relentless headwind.  South of my lunch stop all the thorn bushes and sand dunes gradually disappeared until I was on a ruler straight road with absolutely no features in any direction all the way to the horizon.  With the headwind I was working flat out to maintain about 10-12 kph and I had about 6 hours of that to get me over to the other side.  There was nowhere for about 180 km to buy food or water but I'd filled about half a pannier with cheap biscuits and chocolate (I reckon I took on about 8000-9000 calories that day) but after about 12 hours of flat out cycling I was a handful of kilometres short of the first town on the other side of the desert as the sun was going down.  I stopped to turn on my lights only to find someone had robbed them in Piura.  I guess that's the price you pay for leaving your bike in very cheap hostels, but by that point I was so emotionally and physically drained that it seemed to just knock me out.  Had to walk the last kilometre into town in the dark and then found a cheap shoddy hostel (it was a cheap shoddy town), definitely the highlight of the day was then finding almost a complete family sat out on the street at about 8pm selling bread out of baskets.  Ate a load of that and then passed out comatose for a few hours.

The next day I had a much gentler cycle down to Pacasmayo to stay with a Peruvian guy called Jose who I met through a site called warmshowers.org which is basically like couchsurfing only for touring cyclists. Anyway he and his family were lovely and fed me and gave me somewhere to sleep.  The actual cycling that day was depressingly more desert, and more wind.  I wobbled the first 30 km into Chiclayo on some pretty aching legs at about 6 am, and then spent about 3 hours sat in an awesome cafe eating just about everything on the menu, including some passable coffee which was an absolute luxury, and an excellent fruit salad (I hadn't eaten vegetables for a few days).  After that it was about 100 km more to Pacasmayo which I took pretty gently as I still wasn't feeling too great.  I managed a minor victory over the wind by tailgating a tractor for about 15 km.  Tractors are great because a) they're massive so have a huge wind shadow and b) go sufficiently slowly that you can keep up with them, so that was nice.

The next day I set off with Jose who cycles to work, and then continued on about 130 km to Trujillo, the scenery is getting better (the litter is just as bad though) and the wind is lessening, it hasn't been anything like as bad as it was in the desert.  I did have to cycle through Paijan which is supposed to be super dangerous.  There were police stationed at either end of town checking all the vehicles entering and leaving, and I was kind of hoping for a police escort (I know they've done it for other cyclists) but no luck, that said I didn't have any problems and just passed straight through.  My target in Trujillo was Lucho and the Casa de Ciclistas.  Lucho is something of a legend amongst touring cyclists, as is his house.  He's invited passing touring cyclists to stay for the past 25 years and has over 1200 signatures in his book, it's definitely an essential for anyone touring in South America.  It was also a great place to meet some other cycling tourists.  I hadn't seen any on the road yet but there were quite a few kicking around the house, including another french couple on a semi-recumbent tandem this time.  It was pretty handy to be able to swap route info/tips etc with other cyclists, apparently quite a few people had been held up at gunpoint in Paijan, but I reckon it's probably much worse at night.

Next blog will probably be from Lima in a few days time.

Piura

Cycled for a couple more days through scrub and semidesert, camped overnight behind some bushes and made it to Piura, which is a fairly major town in the north of Peru mid afternoon on the second day.

It's a pretty depressing area to cycle through, the roadside is strewn with unbelievable quantities of rubbish, and beyond that there's nothing to look at but scraggly bushes and flat semi-desert.  Tomorrow morning am starting out on the Desierto de Sechura proper, which is about 180 km of desert with absolutely nothing in it, then I get to Chiclayo and hopefully the scenery should improve.  The worst thing is definitely the wind though.  It builds through the day til by 2ish you're looking at 20-25 kph headwind relentlessly, as there's no cover from it, hence I have been getting a few early starts in, the heat's pretty bad here too.

Not much of interest to report, hopefully there'll be more excitement further south.

Cuenca and into Peru

Right, plenty of drama, for starters the place I wrote the last entry from (Baños) has now been evacuated because the volcano started erupting properly, but that's fine cause I left there about a week ago, had a fairly long day down out of the Andes and into the edge of the Amazon basin, with absolutely awesome views over the rainforest.  Stopped for lunch at some tiny, but nice restaurant and got treated like royalty (this bit of Ecuador is definitely a backwater) had a delicious bbqed fish called tilapia that I'd never heard of before but was a bit like trout.  Probably too long a day on balance, but I'd decided I was going to get to Macas,which ended up resulted in a wee bit of night cycling through the jungle, awesome sunset though, and as soon as the sun had gone down a massive lightning storm kicked off, so that and all the sounds of night life in the jungle certainly made for an atmospheric ride.  Had a shorter ride the next day to Limón which is at the bottom of about 70 km of winding dirt track up to Cuenca, and it is a long way up.  The road to Limón was made altogether more exciting by regular landslides, they were very proud of this road that they'd blasted out of the hills but hadn't made any effort to hold up the sediment, and what with it being a rainforest and all a lot of it collapsed onto the road with the rain, and given that it was largely clay, it was pretty tricky to cycle on.

That said, it was nothing compared to the track up to Cuenca the next day, which was a rough, rocky and steep 4wd track up some impressively vertiginous valleys.  I was struggling for traction on the climbs so let the tyres down a fair bit, fatal mistake as I almost immediately got a pinch flat, and that proved to be the story of the day, the patches didn't really seem to withstand the rocks on the road and started leaking almost as soon as they were on, which resulted in more pinch flats, until eventually I ran out of patches about 30 km short of Cuenca and with a very flat tyre.  Which was incredibly frustrating, at that point there was nothing I could do but sit by the road and wait for a lift.  Ended up waiting until it was almost dark and then some friendly Ecuadorians gave me and the bike a lift in the back of their pickup, although going over the final sections of the road in the back of a pickup was pretty terrifying, especially in the dark, you could see where bits of the track had just fallen away over the side where there was about a thousand metre drop down to the valley floor.

Anyway got to Cuenca and had the next day off, spent most of it looking for replacement inner tubes but did get to see some of colonial architecture it's famous for, not many photos though as the camera was getting cleaned then.  The next day I headed out of the Andes again but this time for the coast and the border with Peru.  Had about 2500 m to lose that day, so it should have been plain sailing downhill all the way, and it almost all was. Everywhere in Ecuador they have these massive roadside billboards declaring how wonderful each new road they've built is, with the year it was 'completed'.  Invariably they still have unpaved sections and are plagued by landslides and cracking from earthquakes, and this one was no exception. About 70 km in to the day there was a particularly creative detour that wound about 15 km up into the mountains and back down again on what can only be described as road made of sand, I have some photos, at some points the sand was sufficiently deep that it was coming in over the top of my cycling shoes if it trod in it.  Suffice to say this made progress somewhat slow, although altogether more interesting.  Anyway, got down to the coast about as it was going dark, managed to get hit on the head by a bat, which was bizarre, but much nicer than being hit by the scooter that took out my front wheel about five minutes later, which was pretty unpleasant, bit of blood but no irreperable damage to the bike, except the front mudguard which is gone now, bent out of shape.  Basically some moron on a scooter decide to shoot the junction (I definitely had right of way, and lights etc) and clearly wasn't looking, and didn't even stop after hitting me, which I guess isn't that surprising, what was pretty unpleasant was that there must have been 20 odd people at the crossroads who saw me get hit (and I was knocked off pretty bad) and noone came to check I was ok, or give me a hand with the bike or anything, which was a pretty horrible experience to take away from my last night in Ecuador.

Anyway found a bed and got some sleep, and headed off to the border nice and early the next morning. The border crossing was a bit of a headache, mostly because Ecuador had decide to site their immigrations post not at the border, nor on the road to the border, but in a town about 5 km from the border in an unsigned concrete box,which took at least an hour to find, but got there in the end. After that I headed down the coast of Peru on incredibly straight, flat roads past what became increasingly arid scrub until I arrived in Mancora which is where I am now, having the morning off in a hostel that feels more like a club 18-30 (it has a swimming pool).  Hopefully camping somewhere on the coast tonight, then into Piura tomorrow before the real desert starts...


Some photos up now.

Baños

Have finally made it south of my starting point, I'm in a town called Baños, which is here, and have been stuck in my hostel all day because Ecuador is having a national census, and they take those things seriously here, not only is absolutely everything shut, everyone is confined to their place of residence, even tourists in hostels etc, and there's been a ban on the sale of alcohol all weekend.  Luckily that gives me the chance to write a suitably verbose summary of the last few days.

I spent a day or so kicking around Quito, had a look around the old town, lots of colonial architecture and some wacky churches, including probably the most amazing building I've ever been in, largely because almost every inch of the interior was covered in gold, and another with what was basically a ladder up the outside to get to the top of the tower, although the views from the top were excellent. Have had some superb, massive breakfasts here, the food is really cheap and I keep getting served fruit juice and have absolutely no idea what the fruit is, a trip to the supermarket is altogether beguiling in that respect.

I quick note on Ecuadorian driving.  I was warned by the guidebooks that South American driving is a little crazy.  That is largely true.  Buses are what most amaze me here, there are some dedicated bus stops, but it seems to be possible to hail a bus from almost anywhere.  Morever each bus has some kind of conductor who hangs out the door (the bus doors are never closed) and almost hawks for business, as well as acting as spotter for potential customers and dispensing unsolicited advice to passing motorists.  In tune with the lack of formal bus stops, buses seem to have no qualms with halting in the middle of the road for people to jump on and off, and I use the word halting liberally, they may come to a complete standstill for old ladies (who are then gentle manhandled aboard by the conductor) but for everyone else they merely slow to a crawl making the progress of disembarking altogether more of a spectator sport. Not only buses, but almost anyone seems to be permitted to stop at leisure, even in fast moving traffic or on motorways, to load or unload whatever, I saw a bus stop in the middle lane of a three lane highway so that passengers had to chance the slow lane in order to make it on board.  As for lanes, they seem entirely optional, along with most other conventional rules of the road, which seem to be negotiated on the basis of who honks longest and loudest.  All this said, cycling in Ecuador has been fine so far, car drivers seem to treat you as something of a novelty and thus give you plently of space, and I've had plenty of encouraging honks and thumbs up, which is very much in the character of the people here.  Everyone seems curious about the bike and people are amazingly helpful and pleasant.

I left Quito to cycle North about 60 km to go see some cloudforest, apparently ecuador has about 10% of the worlds bird species, and literally hundreds of species of hummingbird, orchid and butterfly.  I hadn't counted on the scope of the terrain to turn what seems like a fairly short jaunt into an absolute mission of a ride.  The first 10 km or so were just clearing the outskirts of Quito, then about 10 km of climbing to the crater of an extinct volcano, then the best part: 30 km of glorious, winding, well laid road passing through incredible scenery, lots of densely forested, steep sided valleys with no signs of human habitation, and best of all, all downhill.  My enjoyment was somewhat tempered by the fact I knew i was going to have to cycle all the way back up it...

The last 12 km to the reserve were up a  steep and rough 4wd track, climbing about 1000 m.  The going was pretty hard without suspension, and very slow, the last 2 km or so took me about 20 minutes, climbing up through thick cloud and with the odd shadow of a bird passing over the track

The reserve itself was tremendously atmospheric, miles from the nearest road let alone the nearest town, and without running water or electricity, I camped with a spectacular view looking out over the valleys laid out below and across to volcan Pichincha, the view across the canopy definitely called to mind the reassuring narrative of some David Attenborough documentary.  I spent the following day wandering round the trails, saw lots of bizarrely coloured birds, and plenty of hummingbirds, as well as various odd insects and some amazing orchids, pictures below hopefully.  Also saw a massive tarantula, which I think I've mentioned to everyone I've spoken to since, but it was huge, I reckon about 40 cm in span.

After two nights at the reserve I retraced my steps back to Quito, suffering somewhat on the 30 km climb back up, that day came out at about 2000 m of height gained, which feels like a lot on a loaded bike.  Was greatly aided in the climb by a 'breakfast' steak egg and chips though.  Another night in Quito and then I headed off South, we're now up to yesterday - I covered about 190 km South down the 'avenue of volcanoes' which was somewhat less impressive than said title due to fairly low cloud obscuring most of them.  That said I still got a good view of the snow-capped peak of Antisana, and on the descent into Baños some awesome views of the fairly active (and currently smoking) Tungurahua which has threatened to wipe out the town several times recently, but which does provide the hot water for the baths which give the town its name and which I'm hopefully headed off to in a bit.

Tomorrow I head down out of the Andes to the rim of the Amazon basin, I'm spending a few days much lower down (around 1000 m altitude) then have a fiendish offroad climb up to Cuenca which is currently making me nervous, it's about 60 km of winding track through what has the appearance on a relief map of a scrumpled piece of paper, so that should be fun, hopefully I'll next post from Cuenca in three or four days time.


p.s. I´m on skype at silawrenc, I'll try and be online occasionally when I have a respectable connection.